MURDERERS' ROW
If The Silencers gave us the idea that maybe Matt Helm was finally softening up a bit, losing just a tiny bit of his cold animal streak, the next book in the series, Murderers' Row reasserts Helm's bitterness and anger with a vengeance. Murderers' Row is the fifth book in the series, second in the series of films, and as with The Silencers, the book and the film share some common plot points even if the tone of the two works is light years apart. The title, incidentally, refers to the nickname given to the secret organization for which Matt Helm works.

The beginning of the book finds Matt preparing for some long overdue time off, which he intends to spend down in Texas with Gail Hendricks, the main dame from the last book. Of course, no spy in the history of spy stories has been able to take his leave without having it interrupted, cut short, or simply canceled before it even begins. When a top-level scientist disappears, probably kidnapped by or defected to those godless Commie bastards, Helm is given an incredibly distasteful mission. ICE has a female agent who has been worming her way into the enemy camp for months, convincing them that she is a disillusioned agent with a drinking problem, on the verge of a nervous breakdown, ready to spill the beans about her dastardly organization. Her real assignment is to get in, find out if the scientist is dead or alive, and either rescue him or make sure what he knows doesn't get out of the country. Matt's job is to make her cover story seem more plausible, primarily by beating her within an inch of her life in order to make the mysterious opposition believe the US is genuinely concerned that she might be on the verge of betraying them. Another agent, a newer recruit, had already turned down the assignment, which Helm figures is probably for the better. With something this serious, it's best to let a seasoned pro who knows what he's doing handle the other seasoned pro who knows what has to be done. A young kid, someone who hasn't seen and done the things Matt's seen and done, would just muck things up.

Despite careful planning by doctors on what Matt is to do to inflict the worst looking wounds without doing any permanent damage, the female agent dies during the roughing up, which throws a real monkey wrench into the works. Making things even worse, a group of drunken rich college kids out for a midnight swim in the hotel pool witness Matt leaving her room. And to complicate matters even further since this is a spy novel, another ICE agent who happens to be in love with the female agent attacks Matt. Helm, of course, is superior to the novice agent in every way, and leaves him lying with a belly fulla knife, though nothing fatal. The whole affair, however, makes Helm's superiors wonder if he's gone over the edge, become so callous and calculating in his operations that he can kill his own people without so much as a tinge of guilt. They decide to bring him in, which would be easy if Matt wanted to be brought in. He's certain of his own sanity, though, and goes rogue in order to pick up the trail where the female agent left it.

This conflict as to whether Matt has finally lost it and become unable to tell where the line should be drawn, even for a man like him who has to cross the line regularly as a matter of duty, is where the story draws most of its kick. The Silencers lulled us into a false sense of well-being. Sure, Helm had to play up the rough side of his character, but it was limited primarily to ripping off Gail Hendricks' dress and then making wise-ass comments to her throughout the remainder of the story while occasionally beating his chest to remind her of his ferocity. In Murderers' Row, however, we see the return of a Helm who is flat-out ruthless. When compatriots die in The Silencers, Helm maintains his professional distance emotionally but still seems to feel genuine remorse. Murderers' Row allows Helm to skirt the very boundary of said professional distance. It allows the reader to think maybe Matt has gone insane, even though we're inside his head and privy to his thought process. Like Matt himself, we think he's sane. We're pretty sure. But Donald Hamilton allows enough room for more than a little doubt as he exploits the concept of the unreliable narrator.

Matt assumes the identity of a brutish hustler, and he's immediately picked up by the cops for murder. The drunk people from the pool are on hand, and although one is certain he's the man they saw leaving the room of the dead woman, a young woman named Teddy also in the party vehemently denies it, thus temporarily taking the heat of Matt. When Helm has a chance to ask her why she lied to the cops, since she obviously recognized him, he discovers that she wants to hire him to kill someone: Robin Rosten, the woman who identified Matt as the murder. Turns out the missing scientist is the young girl's father, and she's convinced that Robin had her father killed as a result of some convoluted tangle of love and affairs. Teddy, assuming Matt is just a thug from up north, hopes he can get a little revenge for her.

No sooner is Matt hired to kill Robin than Robin in turn hires him to kill her husband, who in turn hires Matt to kill his wife. Helm manages to figure out that at least one of the people is involved with the kidnapping of the scientist. The question is which one, and can he figure it all out before they call his bluff? And can he figure out what happened to the female agent as he wrestles with the growing suspicion that maybe he has indeed gone over the edge?

Of course, it's not all stone-faced killing and brutal business. Helm befriends Teddy, and there are times when he shows some genuine fatherly affection for her, almost sweet in a way. But of course she wears showy bikinis and pants, so when it comes time for Matt to seduce and be seduced, Robin Rosten is the dame for him. Classy, elegant, beautiful and unique. Not to mention shrewd and every bit as ruthless as Matt himself, perhaps even a match for Gail Hendricks. The women in Matt Helm novels may often be treacherous and sometimes be evil, but they're at least nearly as well written, complex, and developed as our main man. Like Gail Hendricks before her, even though Robin Rosten has a real nasty streak, you can't help but admire her, maybe fall for a little for the same reasons Matt Helm falls for her. She's got style. She's fierce but feminine, and knows how to look good in a cocktail dress. Like Matt, I'm a great admirer of that classic sense of elegance and beauty, though at the end of the day, I'm just as happy with a woman who isn't plotting a whole pile of nefarious schemes. One or two nefarious schemes are okay, but a whole pile of them just gets to be a hassle.

The character of Matt Helm really goes through the emotional wringer this time around. Despite the fact that these super-spies often display extreme incompetence in their job, none of them are ever really fazed by their own failure. Matt Helm, on the other hand, goes from confident and defiant to doubtful and suspicious of his own mental stability. That along with his background not as a freewheelin', swingin' bachelor, but as a family man forced back into a shadowy life, make him much more interesting than your standard issue world's greatest spy. Matt's certainty about the course he's chosen being the best and correct one only serves to make him -- and us -- think that maybe his superiors are right, after all. It's not unheard of, after all, for an author to take a popular main character and send him over the cliff. Ian Fleming did it do James Bond when Bond's one true love was murdered at the end of On Her Majesty's Secret Service. In the Bond books, You Only Live Twice follows OHMSS chronologically and features a Bond consumed by grief and rage, failing at his missions and almost unable to function. Needless to say, it's pretty damn different than the movie of the same title. Hamilton keeps Murderers' Row close enough to that same edge so that we never know if he's going to give Matt that final push or allow him to be snatched away from the brink at the last second.

Likewise, the supporting cast is beautifully fleshed out and fantastically complex. Aside from Robin, whose role as a bitter socialite with homicidal tendencies is only the surface of what her character has to offer the story, we have the young and not-quite-innocent Teddy with her Twiggy-like pixie haircut and crazy mod clothing. She's as close to an innocent as a Matt Helm novel has seen, anyway. She's angry and confused, but she's not part of this world of murder and cruelty. She can't adapt to it the way Gail could, or the way Robin can. She lacks their drive, their toughness. She's just a kid, after all. Given the youth-obsessed culture in which we live, it's a breath of fresh air to see the kid treated as such while the adults get on with the real business. She lacks the depth of experience that makes older women more interesting and more attractive, and it's nice to see the man go for someone closer to his own age. After all, what icy-cold secret agent wants to put up with some college kid antics and endless prattle about homework, pop idols, and keg parties?

Aside from Matt, the women in these stories are always the most interesting characters. There are plenty of cool male characters (LeBaron and Romero from The Silencers being two especially cool guys), but most of them are there to die so Matt can look back and go, "Damn shame. He was a good man." Or they're villains and henchmen who maintain a cover for most of the book and thus don't get well developed. In Murderers' Row our main male supporting cast consists of pretty much the standard assortment. The rookie agent Alan hardly registers before Matt stabs him in the belly to be rid of him. The rest are an assortment of spoiled rich guys with no spines and hired goons. None of them are poorly sketched characters, but compared to the women, they just get lost in the shuffle.

Murderers' Row is a pretty involved story, well-crafted, fast-paced, and full of action. It's not easy to figure out, and it's probably the only spy novel to take a bunch of Great Gatsby/ Martha Stewart-esque Chesapeake Bay rich folks obsessed with gardens and pavilions and love triangles and turn them into suspects in an international Communist plot to steal America's scientists. If you've ever had a glimpse at Martha Stewart's police record, you know she's not above the occasional act of brute violence, which makes this story even more entertaining.

When the film version of The Silencers became a big hit despite playing everything for yuks and annoying Matt Helm book fans, it became obvious that a sequel was in order. They went with Murderers' Row, although once again it has about as much in common with the book as it has not in common, and things were played even more for laughs. Still, underneath all the goofy sex and booze jokes we expect from the movie, there beats the heart of Donald Hamilton's novel (or at least parts of it), and that leads to a movie that manages to still be quite an enjoyable swinging spy romp despite the camp value being cranked up to eleven. The credit sequence -- one of the best in spy film history -- should clue you in to that.

As with the first film, this one opens with a group of assassins being given an assignment: kill the world's top secret agents. Among the targets, of course, is Matt Helm, whose file photo is nothing more than the back of his head, a beautiful woman before him, and a glass of Scotch held aloft, circled in red on the photo with the notation "Note distinguishing characteristic." Matt himself is busy shooting photos for a cheesecake of the month calendar, and I ain't talking cream cheese and graham cracker crust. While in his bed that slides forward to dump him and his woman of the hour into the hot tub, the bad guys spring their trap via an assassination attempt using a high-power laser. They fail, of course, but ICE sees no reason not to let them think Matt Helm is dead.

Matt's assignment is to track down a missing scientist who has invented the very laser we assume was used to target Matt. They suspect the scientist is currently somewhere along the French Riviera. "Cannes, to be exact" says ICE boss Mac as the case film he and Matt are watching zooms in on a woman's fine, bikini-clan can shaking across the beach. That's about as sophisticated as it get, folks, so you better fire up the Benny Hill portion of your brain. The French Riviera is a little more exotic, a little flashier, than Chesapeake Bay, but part of the fun in the book was recognizing actual landmarks. Chesapeake Bay I know; like many of you, I'm less familiar with Cannes.

The remainder of the film plays out like someone read the back cover description of Murderers' Row and decided to turn it into a spy spoof. The female agent who dies mysteriously is there, but this time she's simply assassinated and never seen before she turns up as a corpse. The book managed to give her a tragic character even in death as her background unfolded, as we learned how she herself was a hard-as-nails agent who simply got tired of seeing a broken-down, drunken traitor in the mirror. She was defeated by her own effectiveness at playing the role. It became all she could see when she saw herself. Obviously, nothing that depressing is going to show up in this movie.

Matt does meet a hip young girl by the pool, this one played by the sparkling Ann-Margaret looking the best she has ever looked, especially when she starts breaking out the truly inspiring mod mini-dresses and go-go boots. As I said, I share Matt's taste in women, but unlike Matt, I seem to have a great fondness for the go-go years, even if Ann-Margaret's go-go dancing looks like she's about to snap her own spinal cord. As in the book, she is the daughter of the missing scientist.

Matt meets up with her at a hip discotheque where his own real-life son is playing (along With Desi Arnaz Jr.) in a rock band. Needless to say, the movie delights in having Dean Martin Jr. referring to the senior with slang like, "hey daddy, far out!" The scene is actually kind of amusing, though not because of that. Instead, it's funny because it's used to draw the differences between Dean, formerly the coolest man on the whole planet, and these crazy kids with their wild dancing. Here, he looks lost and out of place. His lackadaisical acting approach actually helps him as he wanders through throngs of convulsing teens in Capri pants and mini-skirts. Of course, the literary Matt Helm would have just punched them out if they got in his way, and even here things degenerate to a fist fight that lands Helm in a police line-up where Ann-Margaret must bail him out while a rich older women swears he's a trouble-maker. It's more or less the police line-up scene from the book, though the rich woman here is Coco Duquette, played by the luscious Camilla Sparv. Unlike Robin from the book, whose motivations are shrouded in doubt, Coco is plainly the evil dragon lady accompanying main villain Julian Wall, played by none other than Karl Malden. No one in these movies is as complex or developed as they are the books. Good guys are good guys, and bad guys are bad guys, and that's that. For that matter, Ann-Margaret's character here is not named Teddy Michalis. She's Suzie Solaris, which is a pretty good swank spy movie name. And although Ann-Margaret is a bundle of joy to behold and wins you over with her charm (not to mention her stunning looks and outfits), her character is completely devoid of any of the haunted anger, dying innocence, and gloom of Teddy Michalis.

The finale of the book takes place on a yacht as a fast approaching hurricane bears down on the Bay. The movie keeps the same general idea of a finale at sea but ditches the bad weather and yacht in favor of a zany hovercraft chase scene. I love a good hovercraft chase, and I love a bad one just as much. In fact, I don't think anything bad can come from including a hovercraft in your movie. Die Another Day was no award winner, but the hovercraft scene was wonderful. Likewise, Jackie Chan's Rumble in the Bronx was a pretty pitiful movie, but for the few minutes where the action centered on a hovercraft, it was simply divine.

Murderers' Row is not as good as The Silencers, but it's still a fun movie and fairly polished compared to the two films that would follow it. Dean still seems half interested in things, and Ann-Margaret is wonderful and full of energy, even if the romance between her and Dean Martin is difficult to swallow. But I suppose if I had an album of my own make-out music, I'd be in a better position to judge. Whether or not there is "chemistry" between the two is beside the point. She's there to go-go dance madly and look cute, and Dean is there to leer at her, get drunk, and blow stuff up. Ann-Margaret is probably best known for her roles in the infamous Kitten with a Whip and the not-at-all-bad Elvis movie Viva Las Vegas. Incidentally, screenwriter Herbert Baker also wrote the fabulous Elvis movie, King Creole. His script for Murderers' Row is pretty daft, even more so than the script from the first film, and the sex jokes are already starting to show signs of running out of steam and making no real sense. Production is colorful, though, and the costumes are great. The movie takes full advantage of its swank location. Director Henry Levin had already proven himself adept at shooting gorgeous scenery and even more gorgeous women in skimpy bikinis as director of the seminal teen comedy beach movie Where the Boys Are. Immediately prior to directing Murderers' Row, he directed the Italian spy film Kiss the Girls and Make Them Die, aka Operazione Paradiso, which also starred Bev Adams, who reprises her role here as Matt's sexy assistant Lovey Kravesit. And all that is probably why this feels as much like a silly beach party movie as it does a spy film.

Despite its many short-comings, it still has the same corny charm as The Silencers and ends up being a whole lot of fun. Of course, it was all downhill from here, though a ride downhill can be plenty of fun, especially when you go downhill like Dean Martin: ass-first on a steep mountain railroad track while waving an anti-gravity gun above your head.

Labels: Espionage